APS 223: Sociology of Canadian Society

Examining cases such as the introduction of the Maple Leaf to replace the Canadian Red Ensign and Union Jack as the national flag, Champion shows that, despite what he calls Canada's "crisis of Britishness," Pearson and his supporters unwittingly perpetuated a continuing Britishness because they - and their ideals - were the product of a British world.

Dr. Robert Wright argues that Canadians' understanding of art, culture, unity, identity, and sovereignty are formed by conflicting forces; out of conditions of contradiction, paradox, and irony, Canadians have developed remarkably sophisticated cultural and political strategies for deriving pleasure, prosperity, and peace of mind.

Through much of its existence, Québec's neighbors called it the "priest-ridden province." Today, however, Québec society is staunchly secular, with a modern welfare state built on lay provision of social services--a transformation rooted in the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s. In Beheading the Saint, Geneviève Zubrzycki studies that transformation through a close investigation of the annual Feast of St. John the Baptist of June 24.

The second edition of The Ethnicity Reader offers a comprehensive and engaging selection of readings for students of sociology, politics, international relations and race relations. Updated with a large proportion of new readings and extended editorial summaries, the reader analyses the ethnic component present in nationalism, multiculturalism and migration, making it indispensable to those seeking to understand the relevance of ethnicity as one of the most prominent forces in the modern world.

In The Virtue of Nationalism, Yoram Hazony contends that a world of sovereign nations is the only option for those who care about personal and collective freedom. He recounts how, beginning in the sixteenth century, English, Dutch, and American Protestants revived the Old Testament's love of national independence, and shows how their vision eventually brought freedom to peoples from Poland to India, Israel to Ethiopia. It is this tradition we must restore, he argues, if we want to limit conflict and hate.

Using "unbecoming" as a theoretical framework to unsettle or decolonize nationalist narratives, Helene Vosters examines an eclectic range of both state-sponsored social memory projects during Canada's recent sesquicentennial celebrations and counter-memorial projects to reveal and unravel the threads connecting reverential military commemoration, celebratory cultural nationalism, and white settler-colonial nationalism.